what stone do I need besides 1000 grit

Kitchen Knife Forums

Help Support Kitchen Knife Forums:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
You can maintain an edge for some time with a high grit stone, depends of course how often you use the knife. But I find after a dozen or so touch-ups the knife performance starts to suffer and that is when I sharpen on a medium grit.
You will notice that the time between touch-ups is getting shorter and shorter. At some point it will be time for a complete sharpening, starting with a medium stone and light thinning.
 
Not really. it will gradually become more difficult to raise a burr. Eventually, you will be unable to form a burr on a fine stone without a lot of effort/ time.

When you can't raise a burr easily (less than a dozen strokes), it is time to move to a coarser stone. And do some maintennence thinning.
Thank you for the explanation. I am not sure if my understanding is correct here - do you mean that over time, the micro bevel becomes less "micro", and with a bigger "micro" bevel, it is more difficult to remove enough steel using a fine stone, which is the reason why further thinning is required?
 
i know a 1k is recommended as a first stone, but as soon as you get several stones i feel the 1k is not really needed anymore. 500/3k is good combo imo. then maybe a 220 and a high grit like 6-8k when those are needed.
 
Thank you for the explanation. I am not sure if my understanding is correct here - do you mean that over time, the micro bevel becomes less "micro", and with a bigger "micro" bevel, it is more difficult to remove enough steel using a fine stone, which is the reason why further thinning is required?

Yes that is part of it. I stole this image from @Benuser. Sharpening without thinning will lead to a progressively thicker knife over time. This change in blade geometry can affect performance. This can take a dozen sharpening sessions to notice and then once it happens it's a pain to fix.

thick-knife-over-time.png


But the other more immediate concern with touchups is that a fine stone does not cut fast enough to keep up with accumulated damage at the micro bevel level. So when you stop getting the same pick me up from your fine stone you drop down to a coarser stone to reset the cutting bevel with fresh steel.
 
i know a 1k is recommended as a first stone, but as soon as you get several stones i feel the 1k is not really needed anymore. 500/3k is good combo imo. then maybe a 220 and a high grit like 6-8k when those are needed.

Per a few recommendations, I skipped right over the 1k and went with SG500 and SG2k. :)
 
Yes that is part of it. I stole this image from @Benuser. Sharpening without thinning will lead to a progressively thicker knife over time. This change in blade geometry can affect performance. This can take a dozen sharpening sessions to notice and then once it happens it's a pain to fix.

View attachment 121124

But the other more immediate concern with touchups is that a fine stone does not cut fast enough to keep up with accumulated damage at the micro bevel level. So when you stop getting the same pick me up from your fine stone you drop down to a coarser stone to reset the cutting bevel with fresh steel.

Hey I'm from RVA too! :) Are there any good knife stores in the area?
 
Back
Top